Hey guys, i went to go in for an inspection and it didn't pass cuz the mechanic i went to said the monitors weren't ready. i decided i hate that mechanic cuz he up my brakes a while back so i went to a family friend to get it done. he said the same thing, 3 monitors were not ready. he disconnected the battery, reset the computer and told me to drive it. i drove it about 160 miles since then. today i went to his house so he could plug in his monitor thing and it said the same thing, not ready. He said he has no idea why its not becoming ready. I recently had a CAI installed, is that a reason they wouldn't be ready? anything else u guys can think of would really help. thanks!

No. There are a few that are easy. The A/F ratio is easy to do. Right after you reset the battery (next time, don't do it again) allow it to idle for 5 minutes after it drops down from high idle. Typically the idle on an unset engine will stay around 1k rpm. Once the test is finished, it should be 700 rpm in N. You must not touch the accelerator during the test. The test might still not be complete unless you sat somewhere for about 6 minutes.

Another one is ridiculous- you have to drive like 5 miles at 50 mph in top gear. That's really hard to do.

I don't know what the other monitors are, but those go away after a few weeks of driving. The last thing you want to do is to reset the battery again.

He's saying don't unplug the battery, you'll just start from scratch again. And it's not the CAIs fault, if it were making problems you could conceivably end up with a failed monitor (though I can't think of one affected by intake/MAF/intake air temp stuff), but it wouldn't by itself prevent the PCM/ECU from running the monitors when the test conditions are met. Do you know which ones aren't running/passing? Kind of an important bit of info there. I'm sure there is a Ford published guideline for getting a car to go through all the monitors but I haven't seen it. I think it's totally plausible you could drive 160 miles and not meet all the test conditions for all the monitors, for instance the weird one Whynot mentioned above.

That said, if before this you've been driving the car for months on end and ended up with some monitors not ready/not run, that's fishy. Some test conditions are a little out of the ordinary, but they should definitely all run over a period of time like that.

Is it possible your car has an aftermarket tune? Cause this could prevent some monitors from running, for instance the tune on my car does not make the PCM monitor o2 sensors and I've never had a CEL for that (even though the rear one is totally unplugged and obviously not doing anything) and for awhile I had a vacuum leak with an EVAP line going into the intake manifold and this also never triggered a CEL (the end result of any monitor repeatedly not passing).

il try and find out what monitors were out. but idk what exactly the first mechanic did, if he reset it or whatever, so idk how long these monitors have been unset. how many miles do u think is appropriate for monitors to reset themselves? what kind of an issue could it be if they dont ever reset?

also no aftermarket tune from when the car was purchased last august. im guessing they inspected it before they sold it to me?

As far as I remember they're all emissions related, if you have no driveability concerns then there is no indication that anything is actually malfunctioning, except for the fact that the PCM has for whatever reason decided not to (or been unable to) run these monitors for what sounds like a really long time. How long/how many miles had you been driving it prior to getting it tested at the first mechanic? Just to throw out a number, with 500 miles of regular driving they should definitely all run. And that's a high estimate, as I said there are manufacturer specific guidelines for getting a car to run all the monitors and it can be done in half an hour if you stick to the script and know how to drive the car to meet all the test criteria and get the PCM to run the monitors.

You haven't explicitly said this yet, but you don't and haven't had a check engine light on correct? And you said you've only had the car since last August, where'd it come from? It's conceivable that some previous owner was getting a CEL for something they didn't want to fix and just found a way to turn the monitor off so the CEL would go away and they could sell the car without having to explain the CEL.

One thing that didn't occur to me until I googled, parts of the PCM require power at all times to keep track of exactly this kind of information. If this "keep alive memory" is losing its power when the car is turned off, it would have the same effect as disconnecting the battery and all the monitors reset to not run/not ready status.

1. im not sure what u mean by PCM or CEL (im kinda a car noob but not totally)

2. i had the first mechanic inspect it about 4 weeks ago, told me to drive it, didnt go back to him, went to my friend 2 weeks later, he inspected it and again it failed, told me to drive it. went to him today and the monitors still arent ready.

3. i bought it from a dealership

4. i contacted my friend he said the evap and the catalyst arent ready

5. NO check engine light on since i bought the car, and still isnt.

6. Prior to the first mechanic ide have to say i put about 10k-15k miles on the from when it was purchased in august 2011. since the original mechanic reset the computer, maybe about 500. since my friend reset it, about 160.

Every time the battery is disconnected the PCM clears all monitors and you get to start all over. It's to stop people from clearing computer just before they inspect car, hoping they can pass just before a fault code is set again.

The EVAP monitor is by far the hardest one to set to pass, there is a rigid ritual to doing it, I've done that ritual on some cars and they still didn't clear. You have to drive at 40-50 mph and not ever touch gas pedal hardly at all for a certain period of time, just try that on the freeway with today's traffic. It usually takes 1-2 weeks to clear that one letting it happen on its' own.

The catalyst one should clear pretty easy if nothing wrong and you quit yanking battery power.

Does the check engine light WORK? If burned out of course you will get no light. It comes on for a second when you start car, if not you can't pass inspect anyway.

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